Journalism Online, the end of the free ride?

Many of us have gotten use to viewing an entire paper’s content online for free; paying for a newspaper has become something of a foreign concept for those of us who’ve embraced the 21st century. This, however, is likely to change some time in the future, and it seems that the first steps are being taken to bring about this.

Journalism Online is an enterprise designed to act as a subscription based service that will allow newspapers to charge their readers to view their websites. Already there are newspapers that do this but the difference with this new venture is that Journalism Online plans to act as a central hub – allowing the user access to dozens, if not hundreds, of newspapers.

This isn’t the first time that something like this has been tried; the site Contentville is an early attempt at such an endeavour. Launched bt the same people behind Journalism Online, it lasted 14 months at the height of the dotcom boom during the 90s before going bust.

With the US news agency Associated Press planning to go after websites and services that for “misappropriation” of its material, ie not paying them, it seems that Journalism Online might have more success then its previous incarnations.